Pressed Flower
by dragonskales
Summary: Elizabeth Midford reflects on her past with a certain Earl Phantomhive that she believes had passed on from this world. Drabble-ish. Post-anime?


I realized that a lot of people don't like Lizzie. They say she's bratty, annoying.

Remember that she was thirteen in the series and therefore still pretty much a child. Children are prone to being nuisances, and grating on the nerves. Trust me, I know. But that's what makes them children.

Maybe it was the comparison to Ciel, who was very serious for a twelve-year-old, that sparked these thoughts. I don't know.

In any case, enjoy this little tidbit of an older and more mature Elizabeth. Some parts may not be strictly as you remember them in the canon, but that's because I don't have the means to check right now. Feel free to point out any mistakes.

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><p>"Oh, what's this?"<p>

Lady Elizabeth Midford, now a beautiful young woman at the age of seventeen, carefully lifted the dried flower from where it had been, pressed between the pages of a heavy old storybook she'd used to love. On closer inspection, she found it to be a rose, preserved and now flat, but still quite lovely in its own right.

Carefully replacing the book to where it had first been on the shelf of her room, she sat down on the soft duvet-covered mattress, still admiring the flower. The fact that it had not crumbled to dust at her touch amazed her; it had been so long since she had seen it.

"Ciel," she breathed softly, as if the sound of the boy's name would break the spell of nostalgia if it were uttered too loudly.

Ciel had given her the flower, the rose, she recalled. She and he had only been seven years old, before the fire that changed his life forever, more so than she would ever truly know.

It had been the day the adults in the Phantomhive estate had revealed to them they were to be married, when the time came...

_The younger Ciel balked at his mother, father, and aunt. "What? But... but she's a girl!" The words failed to come out of his seven-year-old mouth quite right._

_"And boys give you cooties if they kiss you!" Little Elizabeth protested, sticking her tongue out in disgust. There was no way she and Ciel would have the kind of friendship her mother and father did. She couldn't imagine herself kissing him, let alone _marrying _him._

_The grown-ups laughed, as though this wasn't a mortifying experience. They thought it was a joke. Maybe it was, maybe they were kidding. Ciel was her best friend, and she was his. They couldn't ruin it with something as stupid as marriage._

_Madame Red smiled slyly. "Oh, come now, there is plenty of time for that in the future. It isn't as though the wedding is _today_."_

_Ciel glared with all the anger and humiliation a child his age could muster. "I'm never marrying Lizzie! Never ever!" And with that, he crossed his arms and stomped his little booted foot, as if that was the end of it._

_He refused to talk to her for an entire hour after that. Eight-year-old Elizabeth had resigned herself to being ignored after countless efforts to try and play house with the boy had failed. Paula, her maid, was now opening the door to the carriage that would take them home for the night. The girl was about to climb inside when a voice rang out from the front doors._

_"Wait! Wait, Lizzie!"_

_She looked behind her; Ciel was rushing down the steps carelessly toward her, waving a flower about as though to flag her down. Elizabeth smiled as the raven-haired boy slowed to a stop, huffing and puffing. Before, she'd been beginning to feel a little resentful at being ignored; but now, she was ecstatic he was talking to her again. She'd feared she'd upset him somehow._

_Once Ciel got his breath back - Elizabeth briefly wondered if he'd run from the roof, if he was that out of breath - he suddenly seemed very self-concious, and fiddled with the stem of the flower, careful of the thorns that dotted it here and there._

_"What is it?" Elizabeth asked. Her parents, now inside the carriage, were wanting her to hurry up, and Paula was fretting when the girl ignored her attempts._

_"Uh... Er..." Bright blue eyes shakingly met hers, nervous for some unexplained reason, before the flower was thrust under her nose. "Here, Mum said I should be nice to my fee-uh... fi-ants..." He stammered over the word, trying to pronounce it correctly but failing several times before he gave up. "My fee-ants-say. And she said girls like flowers so... here." He gestured weakly to the flower she now held._

_Fiancee? Was that what he was trying to say?_

_"Elizabeth darling, we have to go," her mother called impatienly. _

_"Coming!" the girl replied before returning her attention to Ciel. "Thank you very much," she said honestly. After a moment's hesitation, she leaned in and pecked him on the cheek, half to see the shock on his face, half to see what it was like before she chickened out. And then she was in the carriage and the horses were cantering away. She leaned far out the window and waved at the little boy still standing there, hand on the cheek where he'd been kissed._

Elizabeth laughed quietly to herself. Ciel had always been funny when he was flustered and confused. She'd never openly admitted it to him, but she liked him best when he smiled, which had been a rare feat before he'd...

The laugh disappeared, and the girl's face fell as she remembered that she would never see Ciel - her fiancee, her friend, her _Ciel _- with even the smallest hint of a smile gracing his lips ever again. She sighed, remembering with regret, even after all these years, one of the nights she'd visited unexpectedly.

She'd been a childish brat that night. She'd arrived unannounced and uninvited, changed the decorations of the mansion, and worst of all...

_"I hate this ring! Take it!" _

Only, she hadn't given the ring, the one that had belonged to his father, back, or held it out for him to retrieve. She'd thrown it to the ground, shattering it into pieces.

The utter shock on his face, then the anger as he rushed forward and raised his hand... before Sebastian, the butler, stopped him and explained how dear the ring had been.

_"It was that important? And I destroyed it..."_

Elizabeth had felt terrible, even when Ciel scooped the metal fragments up and hurled them out the window, saying that it was just a piece of metal, in not so many words.

Oh, how Elizabeth regretted her behavior on that night, even if her thirteen-year-old pride had not allowed it to be shown. She'd promised herself she would make it up to him, but she never got a chance. Not really.

"Oh, Ciel," she whispered. "I'm sorry..." A single tear dripped from the end of her nose and landed on the pressed flower in her hands, and Elizabeth realized she had been crying.

_"How long are you going to cry?"_

_"I-I'm so sorry..."_

_"Your face is a mess. Completely unsuitable for a lady. How could I possibly ask a lady with a runny nose and puffy eyes to dance?"_

Elizabeth scrubbed furiously at her eyes. No, she would not cry. She was too old to be crying over something she knew she couldn't change. What would Ciel say, if he saw her weeping like a baby like this? Her childhood years of crying were behind her.

So why did the tears keep flowing?

There was no denying it. Elizabeth still missed Ciel, she would always miss the twelve-year-old who acted more like a grown man than others older than him.

But, like all other wounds, this one would eventually heal, even if it took another four years, or the rest of her life. Maybe it would leave a scar, but it wouldn't get any worse than it had already been.

For now, Elizabeth replaced the pressed flower back into the book and closed it before sliding it under her pillow and reaching into a pocket for a handkerchief to wipe her eyes with.

Yes the wound would heal. But not today, as it would seem.

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><p>First ever Black Butler fanfiction. How did I do?<p>

I should probably mention that I do not own Black Butler. If I did, well, this would be in the actual show, and not just a oneshot of fan-written literature.


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